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Hurricane Dorian: In South Carolina, a sigh of relief after days of bated breath

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Musician Stan James Gregory said he wanted to see the internet-famous Jeep in Myrtle Beach on Friday, Sept. 6, 2019. His wife, Paula, got a photo of him for his website. KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK

Brandon Barclay of Murrells Inlet talks about two floating islands of vegetation, one resting up against the backyard fence Friday, Sept. 6, 2019. Hurricane Dorian passed by South Carolina off shore through Thursday night with less damage than many were expecting. KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK

A floating island of vegetation stops up against the backyard fence of Brandon Barclay of Murrells Inlet Friday, Sept. 6, 2019. Hurricane Dorian passed by South Carolina off shore through Thursday night with less damage than many were expecting. KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK

Musician Stan James Gregory said he wanted to see the internet-famous Jeep in Myrtle Beach on Friday, Sept. 6, 2019. His wife, Paula, got a photo for his website. KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK

Terence Powell puts a lid back on a North Ocean Boulevard garbage can in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Friday, Sept. 6, 2019. Powell said the city took them off before Hurricane Dorian came so they would not blow off. KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK

Terence Powell puts a lid back on a North Ocean Boulevard garbage can in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Friday, Sept. 6, 2019. Powell said the city took them off before Hurricane Dorian came so they would not blow off. KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK

A playground boat is surrounded by flooding water at the Lazy Gator shop in Murrells Inlet, S.C., with from Hurricane Dorian arriving later in the afternoon Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019. KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK

A No Parking sign on the side of a flooded road near Murrells Inlet on Atlantic Avenue, during the highest tide of the day, with from Hurricane Dorian arriving later in the afternoon in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina Thursday, Sept. 5, 2019. KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK

A sign at a business on U.S. highway 17 business asks for Hurricane Dorian to go away and for people to be safe Friday, Sept. 6, 2019. Hurricane Dorian passed by South Carolina off shore through Thursday night with less damage than many were expecting. KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK

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For days, it seemed as if Hurricane Dorian might never arrive.

And the wait for the second-most-powerful storm ever recorded in the Atlantic gave the South Carolina coast, already weary of devastating storms, only more time to stew over questions.

How might it resemble the three storms in the previous three years that struck South Carolina in their own ways – Matthew, Irma and Florence? Could it rival the state's most-devastating storm – Hurricane Hugo that, incidentally, happened 30 years ago this month?

Today, those questions have been answered with the clear, rising sun and a return the late-summer scorching heat. It revealed that in South Carolina, Dorian was not nearly as devastating as its predecessors nor the predictions that it would be.

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JR and Dana Hammond, of Conway, walk with their poodles and collect shells at sunrise the day after Hurricane Dorian hit the coast here.(Photo: Photo Ken Ruinard/staff)

From the Lowcountry to the Grand Strand, there was a sigh of relief.

The fears of seawater overtopping the walls of The Battery and torrential rainfall leaving the city underwater proved unfounded, as water on familiar streets reached alarming levels in the morning only to level off.

Mayor John Tecklenburg tweeted Thursday night that the city was "counting our blessings."

In Myrtle Beach, the biggest story of the day turned out to be a Jeep abandoned in Hurricane Dorian's waves that became the social media mascot of the storm.

In a statement after the car was removed Friday morning, Myrtle Beach Police Department stressed they were sending statements out about an incident that didn't involve injuries or death or massive destruction.

They called themselves "lucky."

South Carolina hurricane luck looked like dealing mainly with only one of Dorian's deadly impacts; Wind.

It was more about the wind than the promise of high tides coupled with the storm surge to inundate streets, home and businesses.

The wind downed power lines in Charleston. The wind whipped into tornadoes that touched down in Little River and North Myrtle Beach early Thursday.

Charleston, Folly Beach cleans up the mess from Dorian

This morning, Maggie Wehunt was sweeping and removing sandbags from the front of Two Cumberland, a locally owned women's boutique that she manages in the King Street shopping district.

Owners were beginning to clean up tree debris from the wind, but there was no water to sop up, and also no shoppers to be seen as tourists canceled plans for the weekend.

Wehunt lives on James Island, where she says winds downed trees and knocked out power that still hasn't been restored. In fact, she said, a tree falling on the neighbor's home was about the only entertainment to be had as the storm hit.

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Utility workers work to repair downed power lines on Bull Street in Charleston, SC Friday, September, 6, after Hurricane Dorian moved up the coast from the Bahamas.(Photo: MATT BURKHARTT/Staff)

For her, Dorian was a big storm. She was attending Clemson University for Matthew and Irma, and evacuated for Florence last year, which turned out to have virtually no impact but inconvenience. It's all relative – what you've experienced before and whether your home has air conditioning.

"It was a lot worse than we were expecting," she said. "We couldn't go anywhere, so we were literally watching a tree fall on my neighbor's roof. A huge tree. We were watching them out the window and that was our entertainment."

The wind left debris in downtown Charleston, some big trees split in two, like the one on Marion Square that splintered onto Calhoun Street but was cleaned up by midday. Professional crews were out, surely a windfall weekend.

Market Street, about a foot underwater at one point as Dorian hit yesterday as the street is prone to do, was dry and the only sign of a storm was tree debris and windows that owners had not yet returned to remove the boards from. The Battery's wooded park was a mess of limbs that had yet to be cleaned up by morning as crews made a priority of clearing necessary pathways.

Johnny Crawford was born in Charleston and has lived on Morris Street in the area of College of Charleston for the past 25 years. He was here for Hugo.

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Joe Taschner removes plywood boards from the front windows of the Mitchell Hill storefront on King Street in Charleston, SC Friday, September, 6, after Hurricane Dorian moved up the coast from the Bahamas.(Photo: MATT BURKHARTT/Staff)

Dorian brought enough flooding for him to kayak down his street - but he said just about any rainstorm is capable of that. The historic homes, built to last in some cases more than a century ago, blocked the winds.

Dorian is one in a long line of storms, he said.

"I never leave," Crawford said. "I'm immune to it. I was born and raised here. I'm used to it."

Today, the city of Charleston asked residents to delay returning if at all possible to clean up the debris that the winds caused, which would give crews more room to work around in. That cleanup effort had started barely before the storm left yesterday afternoon. The restaurants serving limited menus - like One Broad, which opened yesterday, serving only pancakes and hot dogs, as the eye of the storm passed and winds were still gusting - had already done the same.

Meanwhile, the barrier island beach town of Folly Beach was open for business, with a flashing sign asking visitors to be patient during cleanup.

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Workers remove from plywood boards from Hyman's Seafood on Meeting Street in Charleston, SC Friday, September, 6, after Hurricane Dorian moved up the coast from the Bahamas.(Photo: MATT BURKHARTT/Staff)

The beaches were in good shape with almost no sign of damaging storm surge. Sunbathers and surfers were out. Homes were intact, with some covered with debris and some flooding still, and the downtown area was abuzz as owners open restaurants and shops.

The Charleston Regional Airport was back in business. Half of Dominion's energy customers had power restored as crews worked through the night.

Dorian's winds proved to be the culprit, not water

When Dorian arrived before the sun rose Thursday morning, it was a shadow of the terrible storm that ravaged the Bahamas for three days and decimated the island chain with 185 mph winds, killing at least 23 people, flattening miles and miles of neighborhoods.

From Charleston to Myrtle Beach, the highest wind speeds clocked in at 87 mph at Winyah Bay, a coastal area of Georgetown in between. Out to sea, a buoy about 40 miles from Charleston recorded a gust of 98 mph.

It was these winds had the greatest impact in Charleston, said Jonathan Lamb, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Gusts toppled the trees, which downed power lines, leading to, at one point, hundreds of thousands stranded in the dark.

Even though Dorian was, overall, less destructive than Hurricane Matthew, the impacts from the wind damage this week were far greater than the storm that hit the coast here in 2016, Lamb said.

The wind speeds were similar, but because Dorian moved more slowly than Matthew, Charleston experienced high winds for a longer time.

"That might explain why there are more trees down," he said.

Brandon Barclay of Murrells Inlet talks about two floating islands of vegetation, one resting up against the backyard fence Friday, Sept. 6, 2019. Hurricane Dorian passed by South Carolina off shore through Thursday night with less damage than many were expecting.(Photo: KEN RUINARD / GANNETT USA TODAY NETWORK)

That's not to say that water wasn't a factor at all, especially in the Myrtle Beach area. Rain totaled 11 inches in areas of Georgetown County, about 7 inches in Myrtle Beach, just over 5 inches measured at the Charleston airport.

On Friday afternoon, Parker Street on Pawleys Island was still under a couple of feet of water in some section. A section of nearby U.S. 17 was also flooded – but not by enough water to shut down the highway.

The dreaded storm surge did arrive during high tide Thursday around 1:30 or 2 p.m., but had receded by 5:30 p.m. The National Weather Service needs to do more research in the coming days before officially saying how high the surge reached.

But they do know this already: The wind, it turned out, helped spare the coast from these life-threatening surges.

Lamb explained it this way: A storm surge is caused by wind pushing water against the shore. "It's like you're pushing a wave of water into the shore, and it's causing that water to pile up," he said.

So, the wind has to push straight into the coast or at enough of an angle to get inland or into harbors. And the closer the hurricane is to the coast, the larger the surge.

But when Dorian arrived, it was not as close to the South Carolina coast as once predicted. And the wind was more parallel than they forecast, too, he said.

Flooding areas in Murrells Inlet on US highway 17 Friday, Sept. 6, 2019, one day after Hurricane Dorian came through the area.(Photo: KEN RUINARD/GANNETT USA TODAY)

What Myrtle Beach looked like after Hurricane Dorian

When the sun rose Friday, walkers had already returned to the beach. They picked up the shells in the low tide.

Nearby, Myrtle Beach works picked up trashcan lids that Dorian had tossed about overnight.

Snapped palmetto limbs scattered across the sidewalk in this tourist town. But the light of the boardwalk never dimmed. The Ferris wheel still defines the skyline.

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Myrtle Beach woke up Friday to a very little damage from Hurricane Dorian.(Photo: Photo by Ken Ruinard/staff)

Just two days before, the tourist hotspot was in the worst predicted storm surge zone in the state, with forecasters calling for up to eight feet. So was Georgetown historic district. On Wednesday, business owners lined their door fronts with sandbags. The manager of one department store used the same bags he put out during Hurricane Florence last year.

This year, the waters rose, and the waters fell. And the waters didn't take much with them.

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CHARLESTON, S.C. (AP) — Hurricane Dorian sideswiped the Carolinas with shrieking winds, tornadoes and sideways rain Thursday as it closed in for a possible direct hit on the dangerously exposed Outer Banks. At least four deaths in the Southeast wer
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